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At 2:19 PM -0300 8/21/12, Bob McDonald wrote:
>On walking the Salt Marsh Trail this morning, Painted Ladies were
>the most common species encountered and there must have been a 100
>of them - remarkable!! I couldn't find an American Lady among them.
>Almost equally numerous were Cabbage Whites. These were the only
>leps encountered except for a single Clouded Sulphur. Certainly
>more butterflies than shorebirds,
Bob,
I've run some surveys at Roach's Pond in Spryfield (west of the
Northwest Arm in Halifax, NS, on Herring Cove Rd.) recently.
Beginning Friday 18th, out of curiousity, I attempted to
conservatively count (meaning that if a counted butterfly flew off in
the direction of my travel then I did not count the next butterfly I
saw) the Painted and American Ladies. The ratio was 27 Painteds to 3
Americans on Friday morning (about 10:30am), 21 to 1 on Saturday
afternoon (around 3 pm) and this morning (10:30 - noon) it had risen
to an astounding 111 to 3. The week previous the American's had
outnumbered the Painteds about 3 to 1...
There was lots of activity there today, but still only 3 species (the
other was a wood nymph), not even a Cabbage White or either of the
Sulphurs. Intriguingly, for all the Painted Lady activity, there was
very little territorial squabbling and no mated pairs seen, though I
did manage to scare a Painted off the path directly into the waiting
forelegs of a Dragonhunter.
There has been a massive outbreak of Painted Ladies this year, noted
especially in Ontario & Quebec...we're a bit later but the outbreak
is definitely being seen here now too.
Phil
--
Phil Schappert, PhD
27 Clovis Ave.
Halifax, NS, B3P 1J3
902-404-5679 (home)
902-460-8343 (cell)
www.philschappert.com
www.papiliomusic.ca
"Just let imagination lead, reality will follow through..."
(Michael Hedges)
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